Naples woman revives boy found at bottom of a community swimming pool

Answering the cries for help, a 25-year-old Naples woman dove into the deep end of a closed community pool to save a lifeless young boy.

"I realized at that moment that I'm just going to go, I just reacted," Nicole Reynolds said. "You get that adrenaline rush and you do what you think you should do."

Reynolds didn't just do. She knew what to do. The soon-to-be physician's assistant revived the 6-year-old boy.

"In school as a student, you learn CPR but you don't expect to use it," said Reynolds, who will graduate in August. "It's nice to put that stuff into practice and help somebody."

Reynolds' heroics last Sunday came out of nowhere. She was actually lost in an unfamiliar town.

The Nova Southeastern student traveled to Clewiston, nearly two hours from her Fort Myers school, to wrap up her internal medicine training at a hospital there. When searching for her school-provided apartment a little girl ran in front of her car.

"My brother, my brother," the little girl cried while pointing at the Clewiston City Pool next to her.

Reynolds, a 2005 Gulf Coast High School graduate, said it was a calling — both her field of study, and being in that neighborhood, far from where she needed to be.

"God was seriously looking out for this little boy," Reynolds said. "I'm lost, the GPS is taking me in circles — twice. Then I found the little girl, I couldn't have been further from my apartment. So weird."

She had only been in town five minutes.

As Reynolds stopped her car, noticing a baby in a stroller next to the little girl, she thought, "This is strange."

Following the distraught little girl to a locked fence surrounding a closed community pool, Reynolds saw a mother crying and speaking Spanish.

After squeezing through the gate of the locked fence, Reynolds kicked off her shoes, threw her phone and keys to the side, and dove in. With the help of a couple other boys who jumped over the fence, she pulled the little boy from the pool.

Reynolds said the boy looked blue and was foaming at the mouth. She then relied on her medical skills she'd been honing since 2010. She administered CPR as emergency crews arrived at the scene.

"It doesn't surprise me she would do something like that," said Brenda Diaz, Reynolds' professor and academic adviser. "We strive to prepare these individuals to not only do their job well, but to do it with compassion, humility and a deep sense of caring. This is a perfect example of that."

The boy spit up some water and began to breathe, Reynolds said, but never regained consciousness that day.

According to Clewiston news reports, the mother attempted to scale the fence, but even if she made it over, she didn't know how to swim. She told Clewiston authorities that she took the kids to the City Water Park nearby. Distracted by the other children, the little boy sneaked away and the mother said she realized too late he was in the pool.

Reynolds' mother, Donna Koenig, a Naples resident, owns Superior Swim Systems, a swimming pool company that specializes in installing commercial pools all over the country, said her daughter's act highlights a bigger problem.

"These kids, that age, they need to learn how to swim," Koenig said. "It amazes me the kids, with a pool in the neighborhood, don't know how to swim."

The little boy was rushed to the Hendry Regional Medical Center and later flown to St. Mary's Hospital in West Palm Beach.

On Monday, Reynolds said she got word that the little boy is off the ventilator and out of the hospital, alive and well.

"I just so thankful I knew what to do in that situation," Reynolds said. "It feels really good to help somebody."